Give Your Emails a Chance to Survive
Before we talk about perfect subject lines, pitch templates, or indie game outreach tips for how to reach streamers and press, we need to deal with a more basic problem: a lot of indie outreach never survives the spam filter — and even when it does, it often looks too sketchy to trust.
If you’re sending keys and pitches from a random Gmail address, with no proper website and no press kit link, you’re asking people to take a risk on you. That’s a tough sell when their inbox is already full of scams and mass-blast emails. This guide is part of our Indie Dev Guides series — and it’s about fixing your foundations so that, when you do send outreach, your emails actually have a chance.
1. Stop using throwaway emails for serious outreach
If your emails are coming from addresses like cooldevguy123@gmail.com, indiegamestudio.pr@gmail.com, or a reused “test” account you also use for random sign-ups, then from the receiver’s perspective you’re standing in the same line as fake key resellers, partnership spam, and mass-blast promo lists that don’t even know who they’re writing to.
Modern spam filters — and tired human brains — both work the same way. A lot of @gmail.com outreach ends up in spam or Promotions, especially if it’s copy-pasted to many recipients. Even when it hits the inbox, many people skip anything that looks like a burner or throwaway address. Gmail can work in some cases, but you’re starting from a weak position. We want to move you into a place where your email looks like it’s coming from a real project, not noise.
2. Buy a proper domain (it’s cheaper than you think)
You don’t need a massive site. You need a home for your game and your studio. A domain usually costs roughly the price of one or two coffees per month (often in the $10–$20/year range, depending on provider and TLD). Choose something that matches your game or studio, like yourgamename.com or yourgamestudio.com.
Disclosure: affiliate link on this page (Simply.com). We may earn a small commission if you use it, at no extra cost to you.
An example of a low-cost provider offering domain, website, and email hosting for indie teams.
That small cost gives you a stable, “official” place to point people to, a name you can reuse everywhere (site, email, press kit, store pages, decks), and a much stronger “this is a real project” signal when someone looks you up. For serious outreach, that yearly cost is simply part of doing business.
3. Use a domain email (or at least a branded “From” name)
Once you have a domain, use it. An email like press@yourgamestudio.com or hello@yourgamename.com instantly reads as more credible than a random Gmail — even if the studio is tiny. It also makes it easier for people to verify you quickly by matching your email domain to your website domain.
If you can’t switch off Gmail yet, at minimum: use a consistent “From” name such as Your Name — Your Game Studio, and make sure your signature links back to your domain and store pages. Gmail with no footprint looks like a scam. Gmail with a real site, press kit, and store listing looks like a small team still getting set up. That difference matters.
4. Turn on basic email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
If you’re sending from your own domain, ask your email host to help you enable SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These are standard settings that tell email providers “yes, this domain is allowed to send mail” and “yes, this message is authentic.” It won’t magically fix bad outreach — but it removes a common reason legitimate emails get treated like junk.
Most decent providers either guide you through this or set it up for you. If you’re not sure, don’t guess — ask support. It’s one of those boring foundation steps that pays off every time you hit send.
5. Use alias emails instead of five separate inboxes
You don’t need separate logins and mailboxes for everything. Most email providers that support custom domains let you create aliases that all forward into one inbox.
For example, you can set up hello@yourgamestudio.com as your main inbox, then create press@yourgamestudio.com and business@yourgamestudio.com as aliases that both forward to hello@. From the outside, an email from press@yourgamestudio.com feels very different to a generic Gmail. Inside, you still only have one inbox to check — and you can label and filter by alias so you always know who’s press, who’s business, and who’s general community.
6. You don’t need a news website — just 1–2 solid pages
Many devs freeze at the word “website” because they picture a full blog, CMS, and weekly posts. You don’t need any of that to start. You need one clear page that explains your game and points to your stores — and optionally a second page dedicated to press and your press kit.
The important thing is: make it obvious what the game is, where to get it, and how to contact you. That’s what press, creators, and players are really looking for. If you want to go deeper on the strategy side while you build this out, you can also read our piece on streamers, press, and indie PR strategy.
Indie PR: Streamers + Press.
7. Always include your links in every outreach email
This is where a lot of solo dev emails die. You send a key or a pitch but there’s no website link, no press kit link, and no easy way to verify that you are who you say you are. From press or creator side, that’s a red flag — we’ve all been burned by fake key offers and shady pitches.
Every outreach email should make it effortless to check you out without replying. At the bottom of every email, include your game website (for example, https://yourgamename.com), your press kit link (for example, https://yourgamename.com/press), and a primary store link (Steam, App Store, Google Play, Itch, and so on). Always link back to your own pages in your outreach so that, if your email is forwarded, screenshotted, or dropped into a Discord, your official source travels with it.
8. Avoid the most common “instant spam” mistakes
A few small choices can quietly kill deliverability. If you want your first wave to land clean: don’t attach random ZIP files, don’t use link shorteners, don’t paste walls of tracking-heavy links, and don’t send the exact same copy to a huge list in one go. Keep it simple, human, and easy to verify.
If you’re sending keys, it’s often safer to lead with the pitch + links first, then share keys after someone replies (or via a clear, trusted key request process). You’re trying to build trust — not force it.
9. Test everything before you start proper outreach
Before you send 50 or 100 emails, test a smaller batch. Send your outreach email to your own second email account and to a friend on a different provider (for example, Outlook vs Gmail). Check whether it lands in inbox, Promotions, or spam, whether all the links work, and whether it looks clean on both mobile and desktop.
This takes a little time, but it prevents you from burning your first wave of outreach on broken links, missing press kit URLs, or messages that go straight to spam. You only get one “first impression” with a lot of busy people — respecting their time starts here.
A simple 1-page game website layout you can copy
To make this practical, here’s a basic layout you (or your web person) can copy. You can build this with almost any site builder or static site generator. You don’t need more than this to support serious outreach.
Hero: logo, tagline, one clear action
The goal of the hero section is to make it instantly clear what the game is and what you want the player to do. Include your game logo or title, a one-line tagline that explains the core fantasy or hook, a two–three sentence pitch, and one main call to action such as “Wishlist on Steam” or “Get it on [Store]”. Place that button where it’s impossible to miss.
Trailer and screenshots
Next, show the game. Embed one main trailer (YouTube, Rumble, or your platform of choice) and follow it with a small grid of three to six strong screenshots. Each screenshot should highlight something different — exploration, combat, building, UI, characters, atmosphere — using a recent build so there’s no confusion later about how the game looks today.
Core features
Then outline what players will actually do in the game. Stick to three to six clear, player-facing bullets. Focus on things like building and customisation, exploration and survival, choice and consequence, or replayability and progression. If a bullet would fit comfortably on your Steam page, it’s probably the right level of detail for your site as well.
Platforms and store links
After that, list all confirmed platforms and link directly to each official store page. For example, PC on Steam or Itch, console on the relevant PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo store, and mobile on the App Store or Google Play. Make the store names clickable, and avoid third-party aggregators — official stores are what people trust and are used to.
About the game and about the studio
Include a short “About the game” paragraph that sums up what the game is, who it’s for, and what makes it special. This should be safe to copy into articles, video descriptions, and coverage blurbs. Then add a short “About the studio”, even if you’re solo — where you’re based, how many people are on the team, what you care about, and whether this is your first commercial project or not. It helps people place your work in context.
Press and contact (with press kit link)
Finally, make it painless to cover you. Add a dedicated press contact email (ideally on your domain, such as press@yourgamestudio.com), a prominent link to your press kit page or folder, and optionally links to your Discord and social channels where you are actually active.
Your press kit should contain logos in PNG or SVG, key art and a handful of clean screenshots, “About the game” and “About the studio” text, a small fact sheet (genre, platforms, release window or status, and price if known), plus your trailer links. This is the material press and creators always go hunting for — putting it in one obvious place is a simple win.
Optional: a dedicated /press page
If you want a second page, make it a simple /press or /presskit that repeats the essential info (title, pitch, release window, platforms), collects all downloadable assets in one place, and repeats the press contact email. Nothing fancy — just everything important in one clean location.
A parked domain page for domain1234.com — not the kind of first impression you want for your studio.
Where to go next
This is Part 1 — the groundwork that gives your emails and keys a chance to reach real humans instead of dying in spam folders. In the next parts, we’ll go deeper into how to write outreach emails, how to approach streamers and press without sounding like a mass blast, and when and how to follow up without becoming noise.
If you want to go further while you put this into practice, start with our Indie Dev Guides hub and our article on streamers, press, and indie PR strategy. And if you already know you’d rather have help running full campaigns — targeted outreach, Steam page audits, press kit support, and more — you can read about our developer services here: Fix Access – Developer Services.
Written by Ronny Fiksdahl, Founder & Editor of Fix Gaming Channel.
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